Hi Ethan,

Great question.

I think less about the demographics of a genre than I do about the genre itself. My weakness is in pitching, that's why my team includes publishers and co-writers who pitch. This is because I spend my networking time drumming up bass work (how came you can't bass up drum work?) That's my bread and butter.

When I pitch songs, it's to publishers who I know quite well. I rarely even do demos, just go in and sing the songs to them. Sometimes we'll cowrite on them, other times they'll just like it and then we'll do a demo on it. It's pretty much the same with cowriters. The only cuts I've gotten myself were a few songs on a German artist I was producing who cut some of my songs. Even then, I didn't pitch them to him, he just heard them at a writer's night while here to do pre-production work on his album.

So I've never had to pay much mind to demographics aside from mainstream country, and yes, those are the demographics, though they sometimes will slide younger with certain artists such as Taylor Swift.

But for genres, I believe it is important to get it right. If someone writes a song for modern country that sounds like jazz, or sounds like old country, it becomes a door closer among the publishers. It's the same with jazz, rock, and etc. There are genres within genres and you need to get it right.

You can search the demographics for different genres, but just for fun, try looking at the biggest selling jazz cds, for example. What are the lyrics like, the cd labels, the artists, how about the promo for them. You can probably figure out those demographics with simple deduction.

Interesting thread, I'm looking forward to reading more. Good luck on your research.

Mike

You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way. -Johnny Cash

It's only music.
-niteshift

Mike Dunbar Music